Possibly a more in depth write-up later.  For now, we are tired.  Enjoy !

So it’s that time again, time for Redbull Creation, 3rd year.  I’ll make this short, just got the box, wanted to show some pics. Here’s what we got for the qualifier, our TurBull Encabulator. We’ll have updates on this later I’m sure.  You may remember our entry last year, the telepresence zen garden, and our year 1 entry with crank’d and we went to the finals with that entry, where we built the chill-a-piller.

Lot’s of LED’s for the qualifier this year, maybe an accelerometer.  Need more time to dive deep.  Have fun with the pics.

For this year’s RedBull Creation competition, we had to incorporate a ‘Bullduino’ into the project of our choice. What is a Bullduino? It’s essentially an Arduino Uno shaped like the RedBull logo.  So, we came up with the idea of creating a Telepresence Zen Garden.  Sounds simple right? Well, it was actually more difficult than it sounds.

The diagram below shows you from a high level what we did. We created a user interface in Flash which allows the user to draw lines on a canvas.  That data is uploaded to a web server and stored into a MySQL database.  There is a queuing system written in PHP on the web server. The queuing system keeps track of the order in which the drawings are submitted and it is responsible for keeping the buffer full on the Bullduino. The connection between the web server and the Bullduino is a TCP socket which is forwarded to the USB-to-Serial connection on the Bullduino.

The linux laptop is running 2 things. It’s running socat which does the TCP to Serial forwarding and the Flash media encoder which streams a video feed back to justin.tv.

The Bullduino is connected to a rail of power mosfets to control turning on and off 8 banks of Red and Blue LEDs. It is also connected to 2 stepper motor drivers, 2 servos, and 4 limit switches. The limit switches are used to zero out the XY table and prevent damage to the machine should something go wrong.

One of the servos is responsible for raising and lowering the drawing pen. The other is responsible for raising and lowering the eraser bar. Here is a little video showing how the eraser bar works.

The entire system is powered by a modified ATX power supply which provides 12V for the stepper motors and 5V for everything else. The construction of the Zen Garden was a combination of hand cut MDF,  laser cut wood and 3D printed brackets and pulleys.

Finding the right sand was critical. A very fine grain sand provided the best detail. We settled on using 20lbs of Nature’s Ocean Premium White Sand from Petco.  We experimented with different grain sizes and even mixed the smallest grain size with the larger grain sizes but this did not provide the detailed land and peaks that the Nature’s Ocean sand provided.  

Note to self: sifting sand through a Mexican hat is not fun. Be sure to buy extra sand for experimentation. 

So it appears the BullDuino has another hidden morse code message on it.  We smell something wargamesish.

— UPDATE —

Looks like the decoded message is ‘Wouldn’t lou prefer a good game of chess?’ …. is LOU a typo instead of YOU ?  L is inverted Y in morse code…  could be.  Or could be a clue.

This is obviously a quote from (or a play on a quote from if Lou is real) from WarGames.  Hmm.. 1983… Global Thermonuclear War. Joshua/WOPR  WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Hooray for Redbull Creation 2012!  So it all starts with this Bullduino provided by RedBull.  Here are the initial unboxing pics.  So far it appears to be an Ardunio Uno layed out on a cool RedBull logo pcb.  I’m going to investigate deeper…

This isn’t a complete list or anything just some links to people’s albums we found. You should check out the entire albums because all the projects are really cool.  Here’s a video of the presentation and here’s some links to pics scoured from the web: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18.  Maximum Tech Photos: 1 2

All packed up and ready to go!  Public display and judging begins at 3pm!  Wish us luck.  After 72 hours of sweat, rain, and Red Bull, we finished our creation.  Worthy of description by Mary Shelley, our accordion-style mode of transport is sure to eat a few misplaced fingers if folks aren’t careful.  But, when was the last time you had fun that didn’t have a least a little bit o’ danger in it?  Step up, hang on and count your fingers when you’re done…

Even though the weather has been…..terrible…..we’ve slogged on, making some important progress in the last few hours.  Here are some construction photos, a video of our rainy build area and the first video proof that what we made will move in at least some fashion.  Enjoy.

Like the HaHa Red Bull Creation Team on this page to help them win the “People’s Maker Award”.  Come on, we need your help!

Drawing, theorizing and arguing are over.  Now is the time for actual building!  After an additional run to buy some steel and tracking down a ‘big’ Home Depot, the HaHa dudes are in full on construction mode.  RBBB from ModernDevice is being featured in one of the shots.  Spoiler alert: the pictures below contain large portions of the build design.